At its annual meeting in Geneva, the World Health Organization issued a report saying that tuberculosis could be brought under control worldwide within five years for as little as an additional $400 million a year to target the countries most afflicted by the disease.
Currently about two billion people worldwide are infect with tuberculosis, and about 5 million people die from the disease. If the world does not act to slow the disease now, the WHO report said, tuberculous deaths could climb to as high as 10.2 million by the end of the decade, thanks in large measure to weakened resistance to the disease among the growing number of people with AIDS.
“You can effectively treat this disease and prevent its spread, including in people who have HIV,” said WHO’s Dr. David Heymann. “It is very important to treat TB in HIV-infected patients to prolong their life, and because TB can easily be transferred to others.”
The WHO plan would target the 22 countries with the most tuberculosis deaths. These are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
With an extra $400 million/year concentrated on fighting tuberculosis in these countries, WHO claims it could help those countries meet the levels needed to bring the disease under control which requires identifying 70 percent of those infected with the disease and curing at least 85 percent of them.
Although the cost of drugs to treat tuberculosis is cheap — about $10 for a six month treatment — the cost associated with administering the drugs and monitoring compliance with the regimen is beyond what some developing countries can afford.
Source:
W.H.O. says more donations can bring TB under control. Elizabeth Olson, New York Times, May 20, 2001.
The WHO Says $2 Billion Needed to Tackle Tuberculosis by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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